New albums: Bob Dylan, Fall Out Boy

Bob Dylan

nolead begins Shadows in the Night nolead ends nolead begins

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nolead ends He does it his way. Recording standards from the American Songbook has become as predictable a career move for everyone from Rod Stewart to Paul McCartney to Lady Gaga (with Tony Bennett) as cutting a Christmas album.

But Bob Dylan - who also released the perverse holiday album Christmas in the Heart in 2009 - does not tread the well-worn path. All 10 songs on Shadows in the Night are associated with Frank Sinatra, but it is not a collection of ring-a-ding swing. Nor does it display even a smidgen of world-beating swagger. Instead, it focuses on songs from the heartbroken, borderline morose albums that Sinatra recorded in the 1950s with arranger Gordon Jenkins, such as Where Are You? (1957) and No One Cares (1959).

To fully absorb the Sinatrian ethos, Dylan recorded the album at Capitol Records studios in Los Angeles, site of the Chairman's greatest triumphs. But instead of employing a full orchestra, he cut them with his five-piece touring band, with Donnie Herron's ghostly, gleaming pedal-steel guitar being the instrumental focal point.

Does any of this make sense? Don't we listen to Bob Dylan albums to hear songs he wrote himself? We do. And isn't Dylan's ravaged voice an unattractive instrument seemingly ill-suited for romantic crooning? It is. But the respectful yet unconventional readings Dylan gives these epigrammatic tales of woe - "Where have you gone without me?" he sings; "I thought you cared about me?" - get down to their essence. And it also fits quite nicely with the wizened and world-weary outlook that has permeated his own latter-day body of work, from 1997's Time Out of Mind to 2012's Tempest.

Dylan's affection for the source material - from the opening "I'm a Fool to Want You," which Sinatra cowrote about his relationship with his second wife, Ava Gardner, to Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do" and Jerome Moross and Carolyn Leigh's "Stay with Me," which he performed at the piano as an encore on recent tour dates - is obvious. "To trash these songs would be sacrilegious," he told the AARP in a recent interview, ignoring the irony that many people feel he often commits the same crime against his own songs in concert.

Throughout, the known-to-sneer Dylan actually sings more - and more effectively - in his scarred voice than could be reasonably expected. Still, the album moves at a snail's pace, and some of the interpretations are strained. He simply does not have the vocal élan to pull off "Some Enchanted Evening," no matter how stripped-down the arrangement. But on the whole, Shadows in the Night is a moving, forthright affair that's a straightforward expression of sentiment from an artist who so often trades in misdirection. Alternatively, call it Dylan Does Sinatra, from the Heart. - Dan DeLuca

nolead begins Fall Out Boy
nolead ends nolead begins American Beauty/American Psycho nolead ends nolead begins

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nolead ends It's a good thing soulful emo-core popsters Fall Out Boy broke up, had lousy solo careers, and reunited just in time to save rock and roll with their 2013 album called Save Rock and Roll. That bust-up invigorated the quartet to become more adventurous songwriters/arrangers than in the past. And, as quick as you please, this new album! Debuting at number one on the Billboard Top 200, American Beauty/American Psycho is everything you could want in a zealously frazzled, pop-cultural-conscious Fall Out Boy record, plus judicious samples of The Munsters theme, Suzanne Vega songs, disco, and more.

From the steaming "The Kids Aren't Alright," with its cutesy, whistling hook, to the surf-rocking sprint "Uma Thurman," you get the feeling that sensitive soul man Patrick Stump and frenetic pop-punk Pete Wentz have as many kitsch chuckles up their sleeves as they do wildly catchy tunes. That's not to say that American Beauty/American Psycho is silly. Jittery dance-rawk cuts such as "Novocaine," the steadily grooving "Centuries," the warmly fanboy-ish "Favorite Record," and the rolling loneliness of "Twin Skeletons (Hotel in NYC)" sound the trumpets for poignant lyricism and tensely emotive melodies. - A.D. Amorosi

Father John Misty, I Love You, Honeybear; Rhiannon Giddens, Tomorrow Is My Turn; Vijay Iyar and Stephan Krump, Break Stuff;

The Districts, A flourish and a Spoil.EndText